Bei Blackbird Interactive arbeiten einige Ex-Mitarbeiter von Relic Entertainment, die u.a. federführend an Homeworld beteiligt waren, an ihrem ersten Spiel: Hardware. Hierbei soll es sich um ein Free-to-play Science-Fiction Online-Strategiespiel mit sozialer Komponente handeln.

In einer persistenten Welt sollen die Spieler mit mehreren großen Fahrzeugen einen mysteriösen und gefährlichen Wüstenplanet erforschen, können dort Ressourcen sammeln und müssen ums Überleben kämpfen - laut den Entwicklern soll es das weltweit erste "planetary-scale social strategy game" sein. Dabei sollen die Größendimensionen ziemlich gigantisch sein. In einem Interview erklärte Rob Cunningham, dass die Karten so groß sein sollen, dass man mehrere Stunden unterwegs sein könnte. Er beschreibt es in etwa so: Google Earth (in klein) trifft auf ein Echtzeit-Strategiespiel. Für die geschlossene Beta-Phase kann man sich bereits anmelden.

Letztes aktuelles Video: Debuet-Teaser


Rob Cunningham: "The intent was to explore what sort of new evolution we could do with RTS. What can I tell you about the game? It's all about massive trucks rolling around in a huge desert. A sort of Tonka truck experience. As with Homeworld, scale is a big deal for us with this game. The vehicles are huge and just get huge-er. (...) One of the things we'll be exploring is epic scope with a vast game-board. We'll be doing a planet-scale RTS but deploying it incrementally over time. The first betas will be reasonably small and feel like a traditional RTS: limited map, limited canvas. But as we go forwards into 2013 we'll be deploying ever more, ever bigger maps until ultimately the full vision of the game is a planet-scale map that you spent hours travelling across, a fully concurrent experience. (...) Yeah, there are many things you can do with RTS (...) but our personal vision is a big map... you could say in a nutshell the vision is Google Earth meets RTS. We want to develop an RTS game paradigm where there's a very impactive, compelling combat and exploration game on a minute-to-minute basis but there’s also this other layer, a macro game, which takes place over days, weeks, months and it's all about territorial ownership of a much bigger map." (Quelle: Rock Paper Shotgun)

"Long March Industries (LMI) is a ruthless interstellar megacorporation that owns all rights to LM-27, a mysterious and hostile desert planet littered with the buried wrecks of ancient starships. LMI oversees a galactic gold-rush as prospectors and fortune seekers converge on LM-27 in search of the untold riches buried in its burning sands. In this persistent multiplayer game, players command a fleet of massive vehicles as they explore, salvage and fight for fortune and survival in the world’s first planetary-scale social strategy game." (Quelle: Blackbird Interactive)